Photography by Kathy Tran
The people Januari Fox works with at Prism Health North Texas give her hope that everything is going to be OK.
“The best part of my job is the people that I get to work with across the board, whether that’s here at Prism; our staff is amazing, and it takes all of us to get things done,” says Fox, the policy, advocacy and community engagement director at Prism Health. “Our patients are incredibly resilient and active and engaged in their healthcare and in their communities, and I just am passionate about the work that I’m doing in general, and I do feel like it’s making a difference.”
Prism Health started out as an HIV prevention and treatment clinic in 1986 but now also offers primary care, pediatrics and women’s health services. The nonprofit, which has a health center and pharmacy a block away from the Texas Theatre, focuses on building and promoting equitable care.
Fox called Prism “a health center for everybody,” and its mission speaks to her long-held values. She says she has always been social justice-motivated, particularly for racial justice, while growing up in Garland.
“I really just wanted to help people. I’ve always been outspoken and looking out for folks who, now with the language that I have today, you might call marginalized populations,” she says. “I could see the inequality and the inequity from a very young age.”
In college, Fox pursued her undergraduate degree in political science and social sciences from the University of Houston-Downtown. Then, she spent six years as a stay-at-home mother and volunteered with a theater guild in Houston as well as with Planned Parenthood before going on to study political social work in graduate school.
“Social work is what I ended up going with because it spoke to my moral compass and to my values, which is promoting social, racial, political, economic and environmental justice,” she says. “I knew I did not want to be a clinical social worker, and so I took what we call macro path, and I studied political social work, so I really focused on policy, advocacy, community organizing and administrative practice.”
Fox worked in government relations for Legacy Community Health, a federally qualified health care center in Houston, for six and a half years. After that, she was a fundraiser at her alma mater, the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, but she lost her job amid the COVID-19 pandemic. When she posted about needing a new one on Facebook, she received a response within a day from Prism’s Chief Administration Officer Karin Petties, who she had worked with before.
And the opportunity being offered seemed unreal to Fox — creating Prism’s government relations department. Within a month, she started her new role.
“That was almost six years ago now, and I’m really proud of the work that we have done collectively because it has been a huge team effort,” Fox said in a May interview.
Engaging voters, putting out a state legislative agenda every other year, and talking with lawmakers in Austin (including about adding HIV testing to standard sexually transmitted infections panels) and Washington D.C., are all part of Fox’s department. She also recently got involved on the city level, particularly regarding keeping libraries open because they offer free resources and are voting centers.
Oddly enough, City zoning and parking rules is an issue that has come across Fox’s desk. Prism Health is required to have a certain amount of available parking at all its clinics. At our Oak Cliff clinic, this includes spaces next to the building, plus a lot across the street. Fox says the latter is never used.
“The reason that it doesn’t get used is because most of our patients in that area, they take the bus, or they’re taking rideshare,” she says. “They’re not necessarily driving, and so we don’t need all that parking space, but because the City of Dallas says that we have to have ‘x’ amount of parking space, it’s costing us at that one location alone about $800 a month that could be put back into patient care because we’re required to have so much parking that we don’t need.”
The good news on that front is that Prism Health has met with the City, and Fox is optimistic for change in the future.
Increasingly, our neighbors need the services Prism Health provides, which is limited by its capacity. The nonprofit relies on federal grants, among other kinds, to continue operating, but that’s been on shakier ground since President Donald Trump took office for his second term. PBS News reports federal grants totaling $177 billion have been cut or frozen across the nation.
“Over the last year and a half, it has been, honestly, chaos at the federal level, and there have been awards that have been canceled with 24-hours notice,” Fox says. “That’s happened twice to us. There’s jobs that are attached to these grants, there’s services that are attached, and so just to cut that off without any kind of forethought or warning is very irresponsible. It affects everyone from staff to the communities that we serve because if we’re not able to go out there and do HIV testing and get folks into care, then you’re looking at an increased public health issue.”
And if people are physically healthy, they also have the chance to be healthy in other ways, too, like mentally and economically, she says. Those wanting to aid Prism Health’s mission can donate money or their time through volunteer work.
Advocacy extends beyond her job. Not only is Fox a member of the Friends of the Dallas Public Library Board of Directors and The Dallas Woman’s Forum but she is also mindful of her impact in multiple facets of life.
“I believe in a service-driven life. Period,” she says. “We need to be putting back into the world. We take a lot, and in order for things to change and get better — or stay great, if we think they’re great — then we have to maintain that, and we have to get out from behind our phones and out of our houses and in our small groups and get to know folks that we may not otherwise have the opportunity to.”
